Compromise On Fetal Research

August 08, 1992

Congress should test President Bush's claim in the ongoing battle over whether fetal tissue should be used in government-sponsored research. Mr. Bush insists that such tissue can be collected in sufficient quantity from miscarriages and tubal pregnancies, although health experts in the federal government do not believe that.

A limited number of researchers, backed by private money, are using fetal cells to develop treatments for diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, for diabetes and for spinal cord injuries. Mr. Bush opposes most research with fetal material on the grounds that using it would encourage women to have abortions.

In May, he vetoed a bill that would have permitted federal funding for this kind of research and treatment. He proposed, instead, creating a federal fetal tissue bank that would collect material from spontaneous abortions and tubal pregnancies.

But memorandums from officials at the National Institutes of Health confirm what outside experts have been saying for months: The fetal tissue bank idea is problematic. The White House has enormously exaggerated the amount of tissue that would be available and ignored the astronomical cost of starting and maintaining the bank.

Still, the Bush idea deserves testing, if only to disprove the theory. A bill before Congress, which should be approved by a veto-proof margin, would keep the Bush tissue bank idea alive until May 19, 1993. If not enough fetal material is available in the bank by then, researchers would be free to use material from aborted fetuses. That would be a fair compromise